Tangled Out

This is a picture of the cords under my desk where I work at the TV station. I confess, I care less about how it looks than if it were in my home. But seriously, folks…when something goes wrong, I’m on my knees in my suit, doing my best imitation of separating the spaghetti.

Fess up, your Voice Over studio has a plethora of cords that are unlabeled, intertwined, dusted over, and some of them — quite frankly — are a mystery. Am I right?

You can say all you want about the wireless generation, but from my perspective, cords are likely to be around as long as tires.

So how to keep them untangled, or at least manageably hidden and unobtrusive?

Believe it or not, there’s a science to it, and a recent study proves that the longer and more flexible a cord is, the more likely it will tangle.

Ever heard of entropy? “…a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder…”

In other words, the longer you leave something unattended, the better the chance that it will get all messed up. This is true of Voice-Over studio cable tangle.

Mic cables, USB cords, speaker wires, headphone coil-cords, and any number of patch cables that you installed months ago are now mixed into the scrum of a rat’s nest of cables. When you finally have a client who wants to do that phone patch, and it requires….uh….THAT cable…or is it that cable?… are you gonna be able to find it?

I’m not saying anyone has a fool-proof solution, but there are some resources that may help.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, this may be a solution for you.

I found it online for a respectable price.

It’s called the WireMate, and comes with the catchy branding slogan: “The wire mess is gone, when the cover snaps on!”

What about labeling? Luckily, there’s a gajillion places that sell cable labels ranging from NASA industrial-strength costing thousands of dollars to more safe ‘n’ sane solutions costing only a little. Last resort: duct tape and a Sharpie.